Imagine putting hard-earned money in the mail to buy something sight unseen. That seemed mighty risky and very foolhardy in 1872.
But Aaron Montgomery Ward, a gutsy traveling salesman with an ear for customers’ gripes, had a dream. And his salesman’s intuition told him he could make the mail-order business work.
He also had a heap of self-confidence, since his first batch of goods perished in the Great Chicago Fire, his two partners quit soon after the business was launched and Chicago newspapers promptly warned buyers to beware of such a “swindle.”
But his dream panned out, and as it did, it paid off for Chicago, where his once-prosperous company sprinkled numerous architectural landmarks and where thousands once labored hard to make sure the nation’s mail-order dreams came true and in time.
It panned out, too, for rural America, where it was not only possible to find the legions of items listed in the Montgomery Ward catalog, but customers could buy products that came with the company’s vaunted promise of “satisfaction guaranteed.”
The secret of the company that was the world’s largest mail-order business for a time was that it was a department store without a store. It sold almost anything but wives and children, despite customers’ requests over the years, and it did so based on trust and a reliable mail system. The company only started building stores in the 1920s.
Ward clicked on a business strategy that exploded over a century later again with the emergence of Internet shopping and virtual catalog sales. What fascinated rural American shoppers in the 1870s became an obsession for digital Americans at the end of the 20th Century. Yet, Wards stores had fallen hopelessly behind, and on Thursday the company’s owners announced that they would all be closed.
In the company’s heyday, Chicago reaped a distinct advantage from being the home of a flourishing retail giant led by a stubborn master who had a vision of what the city should look like.
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Peering out from his window one day, Ward was repulsed by the sprawl of shanties and factories on land that today is Grant Park.
The vision so upset Ward that he launched a one-man lifetime crusade to preserve the lakefront and used his fortune as well as his lawyers to make sure it happened.
“When a company that old that had employed that many people for that many years closes, you feel a sense of loss,” said Sid Doolittle, who was a vice president and head of the catalog division when he left in 1982 after 28 years.
It once seemed to him that “nearly everyone you knew either worked at Wards or had somebody who worked at Wards or knew somebody who did.” His wife, Barbara, once worked there.
Like many legendary businessmen, Ward was an improbable candidate for success.
He was born in Chatham, N.J., grew up in Niles, Mich., and went to work in a barrel factory at age 14.
Mail-order businesses were not well trusted late 19th Century. But while working as a traveling salesman for a St. Louis dry goods company, Ward decided he could make a go of it by setting up a business that kept its promises to customers.
He also counted on the low cost of mail delivery and the spreading lines of railroads to carry his goods promptly and cheaply.
Working from a room above a stable on North Clark Street near Kinzie Street, he sent out his first one-page catalog in 1872, and a youngster helped him fill the orders. He was 28 years old at the time
Ward, who wrote the company’s catalog in a folksy way and always answered customers’ questions, called upon his salesman’s insight when the 1875 catalog carried the credo of “Satisfaction Guaranteed or Your Money Back.”
The idea of returning an item, and at the company’s expense, was a great selling hook.
Soon the company needed far more workers as sales hit $300,000 in 1878 and continued to grow, nudging past $1 million in 1887.
At the end of the 19th Century, the catalog had ballooned to 500 pages, and it went out to more than 1 million people. The company’s lavish new headquarters on Michigan Avenue in 1899 were in the biggest skyscraper west of New York City.
Ward fought land developers in the courts, determined to keep the lakefront open to the public. He would dispatch employees if he spotted anyone leaving debris along the shore.
Ward retired in 1901 and spent much of his remaining years making sure that Chicago became an environmental gem. He died in 1913, having left behind millions toward the construction of the Field Museum of Natural History.
After his death, his widow endowed the medical and dental schools at Northwestern University with millions.
In rural America, the Wards catalog became a wish book for working people who discovered they could afford and obtain goods that people in larger communities were buying, wearing and using.
Wards customers wanted not Oriental rugs but overalls, solid shoes and clothes the children could wear for years.
Besides people in rural, isolated places who counted on Wards for their buying needs, the company opened the doors to other customers, too, as historian Donald Miller pointed out in his 1996 book, “City of the Century.”
African-Americans, barred from trying on clothes in Southern stores where racial segregation prevailed, became loyal Wards customers.
Facing fierce competition from other retailers and its hometown rival, Sears Roebuck and Co. in 1926, Wards opened its first out-of-town stores in Marysville, Kan., and Plymouth, Ind.
Initially, the stores were meant to display items from the company’s catalog, but eventually they sold the goods too.
In 1939 the company decided to give away its own coloring book at Christmas time as a sales promotion. But it needed a story and it turned to a 34-year-old copywriter for the company named Robert L. May.
Relying on his interest in writing children’s stories, advice from his 4-year-old daughter and a visit to the Lincoln Park Zoo to inspire a company artist, May created the story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
That year the company handed out 2.4 million copies of the tale that has become a bedrock of the Christmas legend.
In a classic showdown between a company and the government, Wards, which had a long history of labor relations problems, refused to follow an order from the War Labor Board during World War II to recognize a union for clerks at one of its Chicago’s plants.
Neither side backed down. Finally, the government briefly seized the plant in 1944. At the same time, government agents had to carry company chairman Sewell Avery, who had refused to hand over company documents, out of his office.
The company fought the government takeover, saying its goods were not related to the war effort, but it lost its battle in the courts.
When business went well, the company’s nine mail order warehouses, located across the U.S., could barely keep up with the crush of packages going out daily to thousands of people.
Former catalog director Doolittle remembers peak holiday periods at the sprawling warehouse, an 8-story facility that stretched north of Chicago Avenue for blocks, when workers were nearly swallowed up in avalanches of packages.
“We would bet when the packing floor would blow up,” he said.
That is, there were so many packages that the workers could not keep up with the flow coming at them from the chutes in the building. The result: The system would come to a sudden halt, he said.
But the company’s once rosy future began to fade decades ago.
While other retailers dotted the nation’s landscape with stores close to the new highways that sprouted in the 1950s, Wards failed to stay astride its competition. As its problems grew, the company lost its business footing. One after another rescue was attempted, but none was lasting.
Mobil Corp. bought the company in 1976, and the firm continued to struggle. In 1988 former Chairman Bernard F. Brennan masterminded a management-led buyout from Mobil for $3.8 billion. But the fix didn’t hold, and the company declared bankruptcy in 1997.
Once again, the company struggled to get back on its feet, and it emerged from bankruptcy two years later in 1999 amid new hopes.
But a comeback in 2000 was not in the cards.
MONTGOMERY WARD: A RETAILING PIONEER
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1844
Aaron Montgomery Ward, above, is born on Feb. 17 in Chatham, N.J.
1860s
Ward moves to Chicago to work as a dry goods salesman.
1871
Ward saves enough money to open his own business. He prints a single- page price list, which he intends to mail to farmers, but the Chicago Fire wipes out his stock.
1872
With the help of two associates, George S. Drake and Robert P. Caulfield, Ward restocks and rents a small shop on North Clark Street. They publish a price list containing 163 items. It is considered the first general merchandise mail-order catalog.
1873
Drake and Caulfield become discouraged and are bought out by Ward. His longtime friend George R. Thorne becomes his new partner with an investment of $500.
1875
Company coins slogan “Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back.”
1883
Catalog grows to 10,000 items and 240 pages.
1890
Ward sues City of Chicago for cluttering the lakefront. Disturbed by the view from his Michigan Avenue office, Ward leads a campaign to stay true to the city’s original land titles, which state that the area along the lakefront must remain free of buildings. The legal wars would last over 20 years and cost Ward a large piece of his personal fortune.
1893
Wards opens new 25-story headquarters in Chicago.
1913
Ward dies of pulmonary edema on Dec. 9. His only heir is an adopted daughter, Marjorie.
1926
Company opens first free-standing retail store, in Plymouth, Ind.
1928
Company opens 244 more stores. By 1929, the total reaches 531.
1930
Wards declines offer to merge with Sears Roebuck and Co. Sixty years later, Sears declines a similar offer from Wards.
1939
Seeking to boost holiday sales, Wards commissions a staff copywriter to create a fictional Christmas character. Robert L. May’s “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” storybook is a hit. Six million copies are distributed in 1946. A year later, Wards chairman Sewell Avery turns the copyright over to May, who is deep in debt due to his wife’s terminal illness. In 1949, May’s brother-in-law Johnny Marks writes the “Rudolph” song, which is recorded by Gene Autry and sells 2 million copies.
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